In 1970 the Russians started drilling Kola SG-3, an exploration well which finally reached a staggering world record depth of 40,230 feet. Since then, Russian oil majors including Yukos have quietly drilled more than 310 successful super-deep oil wells, and put them into production. Last Year Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest single oil producer, and is now set to completely dominate global oil production and sales for the next century.
If the opening paragraph of this report started by claiming that completely unlimited crude oil reserves exist inside planet earth, readers might be tempted to regard the entire text as preposterous ghostwriting for a novelist like Frederick Forsyth. If the report then went on to claim that the Russians have exploited this stunning reality for nearly thirty years, right under the largely unwitting noses of western intelligence, readers could be excused for mistaking the author for a lunatic, or perhaps as a front for spy novelist John le Carré. The problem here is that unlimited oil reserves do exist inside planet earth, and the Russians long ago developed the advanced technology necessary to recover these unlimited oil reserves in an efficient and timely manner.
Profoundly disturbing hard intelligence like this does not sit well with the frantic cries of western academic shills and lobbyists, determined to convince you all that the end of the oil world is nigh, or, more accurately, that America faces an imminent catastrophe when global production capacity "Peaks", i.e. when world demand for crude oil finally exceeds the rate at which we can physically pump the required product out of the ground. The gist of these false claims are outlined in a speech given at the at the University of Clausthal, by lobbyist Doctor Colin Campbell during December 2000:
"In summary, these are the main points that we have to grasp: Conventional [Free flowing] oil provides most of the oil produced today, and is responsible for about 95% of all oil that has been produced so far. It will continue to dominate supply for a long time to come. It is what matters most. Its discovery peaked in the 1960s. We now find one barrel for every four we consume. Middle East share of production is set to rise. The rest of the world peaked in 1997, and is therefore in terminal decline. World peak comes within about five years" [circa 12/2005]
Campbell is just the tip of a giant iceberg of academic Peak Oil 'experts' who suddenly appeared en-masse to give you this frightening news, right after President Saddam Hussein suddenly started trading his oil in Euros rather than in US Dollars, a devastating switch with the easy capacity to destroy the US Dollar in less than five years if it was left unchallenged and unchecked.
So these shills [decoys] were carefully positioned to deflect your attention away from the obvious greed and incompetence of the United States Government and its Wall Street masters, and focus it elsewhere instead. Then, hopefully, a few years later down the track when prices start to bounce through the roof, and America has no Euros to buy crude oil, you will blame gasoline prices of $5.00+ per gallon at the pumps on an 'inevitable decline' in world oil production, rather than march furiously on Washington DC with locked and loaded firearms.
Though attacking Campbell and his ilk is not the purpose of this report, his idiot claims can be debunked readily enough. While it is true that nowadays we only officially find one barrel of oil for every four barrels we consume, this is primarily because we temporarily stopped the incredibly expensive process of looking for crude oil when we had already physically established more than two trillion barrels of reserves in known reservoir locations around the world. When those known reserves drop to [say] one trillion barrels we may be tempted to go and find more, but not until then. And while it is true that the production rate from each individual oil well ever drilled has slowly declined over the years, there is a perfectly valid technical reason for this predictable reduced flow rate, which will be explained later.
In order to understand how Russia has left the rest of the world standing in its wake, it is essential to know a little bit about where oil is located, and how it is extracted from the ground for refining and commercial use. It is an enormously complex subject, especially when considering the ultra-deep wells, which should really have a separate category all of their own. Many years ago I was personally involved at the sharp end of two ultra-deep drilling operations [one of them in direct liaison with Russian experts from the Moscow Drilling Institute], and will try to keep this drilling lesson as simple as I can. Thankfully perhaps, the underlying principle of how and where oil is recovered from is not difficult to comprehend, as illustrated by the diagram below.
The theory underlying how oil is formed at such enormous depths in the mantle of the earth is not central to this report, because the Russians have already proved its point of origin in absolute drilling terms more than 300 times. Those interested in the exact process should research the archives, where there are more than two hundred Russian papers on the subject. Probably a good place to start would be "The Role of Methane in the Formation of Mineral Fuels", written by by A.D. Bondar in 1967. What is central to this report is the massive advantage that Russia's ultra-deep drilling discoveries and technical achievements give it over the western nations.
The first advantage I intend to explain is nowhere near as important in global terms as the second, because it is the second advantage that finally drove the Zionist Cabal to illegally invade sovereign Iraq, and thereby bring us all to the very brink of thermonuclear war. However, from where I sit, the first advantage is much more important in simple humanitarian terms, although "humanitarian" is not an acceptable trading process on Wall Street.
As we have already discovered, oil can be produced virtually anywhere on earth, provided the host country can afford the expensive [and sometimes classified] technology, and the massive cost of drilling a well to extreme depth through extremely hard rock formations. But just think what even 20 or 30 deep producing oil wells can mean for the people of a country that has no natural resources of its own, or worse still, for people who have been told by glib western lobbyists that they have no natural resources of their own. Anyone who can prove that the western nations were lying or simply wrong, will become a trusted friend forever. Vietnam is a classic example.
After more than 60 years of being enslaved, pillaged, and raped by the French and then by the Americans, the poor Vietnamese were told officially by American oil multinationals that their country was barren; that western 'cutting edge' technology had failed to find anything to help them recover financially from the mess left behind by American bombs, Agent Orange, and a host of other delightful gifts from Uncle Sam. This of course was exactly where America wanted the Vietnamese to be: desperately poor and unable to take action against their former invaders.
The Russians had other ideas and a very different approach. After telling the Vietnamese that the Americans had lied to them, oil experts were flown in from Moscow to prove this startling claim in a no-risk joint venture, meaning the Russians would provide all of the equipment and expertise free of charge, and only then take a percentage of the profits if oil was actually found and put into production. Vietnam had absolutely nothing to lose, and swiftly gave Russia the green light.
The Vietnamese White Tiger oil field was and is a raging success, currently producing high quality crude oil from basalt rock more than 17,000 feet below the surface of the earth, at 6,000 barrels per day per well. Through White Tiger, the Russians have assisted the Vietnamese to regain part of their self respect, while at the same time making them far less dependent on brutal western nations for food-aid handouts.
All of a sudden in a very small way, Vietnam has joined the exclusive club of oil producing nations, and a stream of cynical U.S. Senators and Congressmen have started making the long pilgrimage to Ho Chi Minh City in order to 'mend fences'. Predictably perhaps, the Vietnamese are very cool, and try hard to ignore their new American admirers.
It is truly amazing how quickly good news travels [outside of CNN], and in a very short space of time China was also engaged in a joint super deep venture with Russia. Nor did it end there. As I write this report, intelligence reports that the Russians have already moved three deep-drilling rigs into impoverished North Korea, where they intend to repeat the Vietnamese production cycle by drilling thought solid granite and basalt, with not a single trace of the 'decaying marine life' so essential to blinkered western geologists for the 'accepted' production of crude oil. It may take a while, but ultimately the North Koreans will be able to go about their sovereign business without the Zionist Cabal in New York being able to blackmail them over a few ship loads of food-aid rice. Yes indeed, Korea will eventually have an oil surplus of its own, allowing it to tell the latest in a long line of terminally insane "New World Orders" to go to hell.
The White Tiger project was the first outside Russia to openly exploit and showcase this ultra-deep technology and oil production from basalt rock to the world, though the original intent was to do so much earlier in India during 1983. During that year a large drilling rig in the Ganges Delta was scheduled to drill down to below 22,000 feet into basalt, and then dramatically flare "impossible" ultra deep oil. Oil well Bodra #3 was directly supervised by teams of experienced Russian drillers and scientists from the Moscow Institute of Drilling, with the author the only westerner on site, contracted to control one of the critical advanced systems needed to reach target depth smoothly and efficiently.
If Bodra #3 had been allowed to drill ahead unhindered, there is no doubt the resulting impact would have sent shock waves around the oil world, and gained enormous international prestige for the Russians. Even more importantly perhaps, the desperately poor people of West Bengal would have gained access to their own energy reserves. Unfortunately, Bodra #3 was not allowed to drill ahead unhindered. The Americans were determined to stop the project one way or the other, and played on New Delhi's obvious fear of the Communist State Government in West Bengal. After bribing a handful of corrupt central government officials, US intelligence sent in professional American saboteurs, who managed to wreck the drilling project while the author was away on a visit to Sydney in Australia.
Before we continue to the second massive advantage derived from ultra deep oil, and thus the primary reason why Wall Street decided to illegally invade Iraq, it is essential to look briefly at the way in which America devours a massive portion of global oil supply. You see, the 'Peak Oil' scam is not really about the world running out of oil reserves or being incapable of producing sufficient quantities to provide for its various national users. Instead, Peak Oil was fabricated to disguise America's individual increasing greed for crude oil, and its imminent inability to pay hard cash for the product. Put simply, America is going broke fast, and Wall Street wishes to blame someone else before the angry Militias appear with their locked and loaded weapons.
This sorry situation is best summarized by Professor Victor Poleo of Venezuela's Central University, who told IPS in April that, "The mechanism by which global oil prices are set is intact, but the normal behaviour of supply and demand is not." According to Poleo, the root of the problem is that the United States ''is a terminal victim of its energetic metastasis. It has neither the oil nor the natural gas needed to feed its style of development. With just six percent of the world population, it consumes nearly 25 percent of the oil and gas produced worldwide.''
Professor Poleo went on to explain that there were expectations that demand for gasoline in the United States would stabilize at around 7.2 million barrels a day by the mid-1990s, ''but that didn't happen,'' he said. ''The United States' voracity for gasoline rose to nine million barrels by 2003, one of every two liters burnt in the world.'' And domestic demand for crude oil will continue to grow. The United States imports today six of every 10 barrels of oil and two of every 10 cubic meters of gas that it consumes, and by 2020 it will import eight of every 10 barrels of oil and four of every 10 cubic meters of gas, according to U.S. government reports.
Despite the fact that American intelligence already knew of Russia's achievements with ultra deep oil production from the mantle of the earth back in the early eighties, it was obvious that this slow and expensive method of adding to national oil reserves could never keep up with America's voracious appetite for gasoline. So ultimately when domestic demand grew too fast, or cash reserves were finally depleted, America would either be obliged to halve its own use of gasoline, or steal it from someone else by force. Halving gasoline usage was out of the question, so instead of building hundreds of ultra-deep drilling rigs, Wall Street squandered the cash building more aircraft carriers, with the desperate objective of attacking and permanently occupying the Middle East.
This is the point at which the second massive advantage derived from ultra-deep oil comes into play. Do you remember how puzzled the reservoir engineers were when they discovered that their existing reserves were being "topped up" from below? They later discovered that what they were really observing were naturally occurring ultra-deep oil wells, leaking vast quantities of oil from the mantle of the earth upwards through fractures into what we nowadays refer to as "sedimentary oilfields", located relatively close to the surface. As the production companies draw oil out of these known reservoirs through oil wells, field pressure is slightly reduced, thereby allowing more ultra-deep oil to migrate up from the mantle and restock the reservoir from below.
Russian studies of their own ultra-deep wells and those in the White Tiger field in Vietnam, indicate in very rough terms that migration from the mantle is probably 20-30% less than production at Middle East wellheads, meaning in turn that if the flow rates of existing Iraqi and Saudi wells are reduced by about 30%, oil supply and production can and will continue forever, constantly replenished by ultra-deep oil from the mantle itself. It goes almost without saying that even with production reduced by 30%, there is more than enough oil in the Middle East to provide for America's increasing usage for at least the next century. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why your sons and daughters have died and will continue to die in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Now we come to the completely false [or deliberately misleading] claim by Peak Oil shills that production from existing oil wells is "slowing down", thereby proving that the oil fields are "running dry". This is so wrong that it is almost breathtaking. Think of this slowing down process in the same way you might think of the engine oil in your automobile. The longer you run the engine, the higher the level of contaminates that get into the oil. The higher the level of contaminates, the higher the level of friction. Sooner or later you have something closely akin to glue coating your piston rings, and the performance of your engine declines accordingly. This is an inevitable mechanical process well known to all automobile owners.
Henry Ford and others managed to slow down the rate of contamination in engine oils by inventing the oil filter, through which the oil has to circulate each time it passes around inside the engine. A high percentage of the contaminates stick to the filter element, thereby allowing extra miles between oil changes, though heaven help the careless motorist who thinks he can get away without ever changing his clogged oil filter when recommended.
When oil is extracted from a producing formation underground, it flows out through pores in the reservoir rock, and then into the open borehole, from where it is transported to surface by the production tubing string. So by the very nature of the beast, the bottom section of the well is "open hole" which allows the oil to flow out in the first place, but because it is comprised of exposed and sometimes unstable rock, this open hole section is also continually subject to all manner of turbulence and various contaminates. For example, tiny quantities of super fine silt may exit through the pores but not continue to the surface with the oil, tumbling around in the turbulence instead, until the silt very slowly starts to block off the oil-producing pore throats. Yes, of course there are a variety of liners that can be used to slow down the contamination, but there is no such thing as a Henry Ford oil filter 10,000 feet underground.
The inevitable result of this is that over time, the initial production rate of the well will slowly decline, a hard fact known to every exploration oilman in the business. However, this is certainly not an indication that the oil field itself is becoming depleted, proved thousands of times by offset wells drilled later into the same reservoir. Any new well comes on stream at the original production rate of its older cousins, because it has not yet had time to build up a thin layer of contaminates across the open hole. Though as we shall see it is possible to "do an oil change" on a producing well and bring it back to full production, this is extremely expensive, and rarely used in the west.
Look at a simple example: Say we have a small oil field in Iraq with ten wells that each started out in life producing 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Fine, for a known investment we are producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day from our small field, at least for a while. Five years later contamination may have slowed our overall production down by ten percent to 90,000 barrels per day. So we are now faced with a choice: either "do an oil change" on all ten existing wells at vast expense and down time, or simply drill one additional well into the same reservoir, thereby restoring our daily production to 100,000 barrels with the minimum of fuss. Take my word for it, ninety-nine percent of onshore producers will simply drill the extra well.
Naturally there are times and places where this simple process is not an option, for example on a huge and very expensive offshore platform, which may have only 24 drilling 'slots', all of which have been used up. To restore your overall production after five years you can either build another giant platform next door for two billion dollars, or "do an oil change" on each of your existing 24 wells, one at a time. Clearly this time you are forced to carry out the time consuming business of restoring the open hole section at the bottom of the well to its old pristine condition, before various contaminates started to slow down your production rate.
For this task you first pull the production tubing out of the hole, and then run back in with a drill string, to which is attached an underreamer as shown in the pictures above. When the reamer is directly opposite the top of the open hole producing section, the drill string is rotated to the right and the blades fly out under centrifugal force to a distance preset by you before lowering the tool into the hole. The objective is to cut away the contaminated face of the well to a depth you consider will once again expose pristine producing pores. As the spinning underreamer is slowly lowered, it enlarges the size of the hole, with the contaminated debris cut away and flushed back to surface by the drilling fluid. Hey presto, you have a new oil well, and it only cost one or two million dollars to restore…
Remember I said this process is rarely used in the west, which is true, but it is not true of Russia, where the objective for many years has been to dominate global oil supply by continual investment. With no shareholders holding out their grubby little hands for a wad of pocket money every month, the Russian oil industry managed to surge ahead, underreaming thousands of its older existing onshore wells in less than ten years. Then along came Wall Street asset Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who fraudulently got his hands on Yukos oil for a mere fraction of its value, and was on the point of selling the entire outfit to the American multinationals when Vladimir Putin had him hauled off his private jet somewhere in Siberia. So Wall Street was finally 'cheated' of its very own 'free' Russian oil, and poor old Mikhail had better get used to the taste of prison food.
To recap, 'Peak Oil' claims that because today we only find one barrel of oil for every four that we use, world oil reserves are running out. Completely misleading propaganda. as the Russians [and the CIA] know perfectly well, reserves of oil in the mantle of the earth are infinite. 'Peak Oil' also claims that we will shortly be unable to pump sufficient oil out of the ground to keep up with demand. Completely misleading propaganda again. We could drill more wells, but Wall Street cannot afford to pay for them, and never intended to, at least not while it still believed conquest and eternal occupation of the Middle East was a realistic possibility.
Professor Poleo makes it quite clear which direction the west needs to go in if it is to survive in the long term, and that is to follow Russia's example by sharply reducing domestic consumption. Back in 1990 America was using around 6 million barrels per day compared to Russia's 8.4 million, but how things have changed since then. Thirteen years later in 2003, American consumption was up to 9 million, while Russian consumption had been reduced to a mere 3.2 million. A few billion folk over there in America might like to walk around their houses and switch off any electrical appliances they don't actually need. Believe me, I can almost hear the oil surging through the pipelines in New York, and I live more than 12,000 miles away in Australia.
In closing I would like to pass on my greetings and thanks to the cheerful Russian drillers and scientists I had the pleasure of working with at Bodra #3 in West Bengal, without whose expertise we might all be dead today, as a direct consequence of repeated American sabotage attempts on the high pressure well. My thanks also to the Moscow Drilling Institute for the unrestricted flow of information and documents on ultra deep oil production technology, without which I could not have written this report.
"De jó annak, aki folyékonyan olvas angolul (igaz, én meg németül, de ott nem ezeket a témákat keresem)! Persze nem várom el, hogy mindent lefordítsatok..."
Sajnos nincs időm többet fordítani, ellenben megoldással szolgálhatok - feltéve, ha valamely világnyelvet értekezési szinten bírod, akkor javasolom a
Oil investment reduced despite record prices By Carola Hoyos, Energy Correspondent, in London Published: August 25 2004 03:00 | Last updated: August 25 2004 03:00
Some of the world's biggest oil-producing countries have reduced their investment in new capacity despite record oil prices. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries this week revealed its members drilled 6.5 per cent fewer wells in 2003, suggesting the global supply crunch and high oil prices could last longer than expected, analysts said. The numbers appear to contradict statements by Opec members that they are actively building extra capacity.
"Oil demand has been booming since quarter one 2003, offering Opec - along with rising oil prices - a clear enough signal of tightening market conditions, which the organisation seems to disregard," the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), a London-based consulting firm, said recently.
"Opec has tried to get prices to stay high and now with nearly two years of very strong demand for oil we are really capacity constrained," said Leo Drollas, CGES deputy executive director and chief economist. Opec's latest annual statistical report, published this week, shows that the number of wells completed in 2003 fell by more than 10 per cent in Kuwait, Venezuela, Qatar, Nigeria and Iran.
Opec members rarely give out complete data on the amount of money they invest in their oil industry, viewing it as a national strategic secret. Information on the number of oil wells completed per year is one of the best rough guides to future oil production as well as to overall investment trends.
Part of the explanation, in particular for Nigeria and Qatar, lies in the fact that companies are drilling fewer but more sophisticated wells. In Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela, investment has been stifled by political disagreements and leaders' eagerness to spend the additional petrodollars on other investments or the enrichment of a powerful minority. But as big consumers such as the US become more desperate for oil, the pressure is growing for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to open their doors to international oil companies.
Mohammad Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, Iran's deputy oil minister, blamed Opec's lack of investment on past weak oil prices. "Most Opec countries have been unable to supply extra oil as a result of inadequate investment during the period when oil prices were weak," he said. "Iran expects to rely heavily on foreign investments to implement its ambitious plans [to increase oil production by nearly 2m b/d]."
Opec's capacity has remained at about 31.5m b/d since autumn 2000, though demand increased by 6m b/d and prices recovered from the Asian crisis of the late 1990s during that time, the CGES said. During that time almost three-quarters of the increased capacity needed to satisfy the extra demand came from outside Opec.
But ageing fields, a difficult investment climate in Russia and a dearth of discoveries in other parts of the world mean that consumers will not be able to rely on countries outside Opec for additional oil.
Meanwhile, US demand, which is expected to grow 4 per cent in the next four years, and that of China, forecast to increase 30 per cent, mean the world could be in for a longer period of high oil prices than expected, analysts said. The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based industry watchdog, expects Opec capacity, excluding Iraq and Venezuela, to grow 2.1m b/d in 2005-2007. But work to achieve this does not appear to have begun.
It can take two years for countries to act on higher oil prices, but this time countries hurt by past boom and bust cycles appear to be taking longer. Opec's hesitancy means it has squandered its spare capacity, the trump card that allows it to play the role of the world's central bank of oil. It has also increased the likelihood that prices will fall only after they have climbed enough to stifle economic growth and, therefore, demand.
De jó annak, aki folyékonyan olvas angolul (igaz, én meg németül, de ott nem ezeket a témákat keresem)! Persze nem várom el, hogy mindent lefordítsatok, ahogy Bomlat néha megtette.
"Ez azért elég lényeges különbség, már ha én vagyok az az ember akinek így jut amúgy meg nem."
A különbség nem abból adódik, hogy benne vagy-e a megfigyelt rendszerben, avagy sem, hanem abból hogy objektíven, vagy szubjektíven szemléljük a dolgokat.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: What does the Minister understand by the term "peak oil", and when does he expect it to occur?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I have to confess that, for once, the member has floored me; I do not understand what is meant by the term "peak oil".
The fact that our Minister of Finance is completely and utterly unaware of the “peak oil” issue is absolutely astounding. By inference one can only conclude that this ignorance clearly demonstrates the current Government’s Energy politics are in total disarray.
It is clear from Cullen’s admission yesterday that the Labour Governments knowledge in regard to the very serious global energy issue of peak oil and all it’s geo-political complexities wouldn’t fill a rice-bubble.
Dr Cullen should resign immediately and the job should go to someone that is acutely aware of the geopolitics of energy – our entire existence as a nation depends on such knowledge.
Our global energy system, a massive complex network of production and distribution designed to meet the needs of the industrial world is failing. Production is only just meeting demand. As the developing world, transition economies like China, India, South Korea and Brazil continue to industrialise at a staggering rate no one, including the oil companies themselves have any idea how energy will be delivered to these countries. As OPEC’s president Purnomo Yusgiantoro commented recently “there is no more supply”. The OPEC nations are producing at peak capacity.
This ever widening gap between global demand for energy and our ability to meet it is beginning to emerge as a serious threat to global stability and will shape most certainly shape the future. Energy security goes well beyond sabotage and dirty bombs, it is the ability to meet immediate energy demand.
Yet the emerging supply demand imbalance is only the beginning of the peak oil problem. According to the latest BP statistics* the world is already losing a million barrels of oil per day to depletion, twice the rate of two years ago.
For the benefit of Dr Cullen, global peak oil is the point at which maximum global production of oil is reached. The production curve looks like a bell curve, once at the top of the curve we move into downside. On the down side it becomes more expensive and less productive to pump oil out of the ground. Prior experience in the US (peak 1971) the UK (peak 1999), Australia (peak 2000) verifies this trend. The world is currently at the peak of the global production curve.
How the Government can possibly plan an infrastructure, an economy, a future for New Zealand without this knowledge beyond belief. The desire to continue with plans to spend billions of dollars on road systems, including $415 million to improve Wellington roads PowerLess NZ repeats is an economic atrocity, for which those responsible for such gross wastage of public funds should be held fully accountable.
Ez azért elég lényeges különbség, már ha én vagyok az az ember akinek így jut amúgy meg nem. Persze a rabszolgatartó társadalom sem volt rossz a rabszolgatartók szemszögébõl nézve, sõt. A gond csak az arányokban van: akkor egy nagyon szûk réteg élt viszonylag elfogadható életszínvonalon és sok-sok rabszolga kellett ehhez, ma pedig elég sok ember él elfogadható életszínvonalon, legalábbis ott ahol ipari társadalom létezik.
Mára már 18 ország van túl a csúcson (az olajtermelő országok 1/4-e). A kitermelés csökkenése gyorsulóban - idén 1,14 millió hordó. A fogyasztás növekedése idén 2,4 millió hordó / nap. A csúcson inneni országoknak kell pótolniuk a csúcson túliak termelés-kiesését, és biztosítaniuk kell a fogyasztás növekedését.
Adam Porter Wednesday 25 August 2004, 10:31 Makka Time, 7:31 GMT
Many producers not only can not expand, they are in decline
As oil prices bounce around the $45 mark one of the main factors underpinning the price rise is the increasingly popular notion of oil ''depletion''. This is the idea that certain countries' reserves of oil have fallen to such low levels that they can no longer produce at the volumes they once did. British trade journal Petroleum Review has reviewed the 2003 Statistical Review of World Energy, put together by British Petroleum, to look for signs of depletion. Its study claims that a large group of producer countries are now in decline - putting even more pressure on those countries who have spare production capacity. There are several worrying aspects to this decline. The first is that added to the current increase in global demand, it means other countries must produce more just for the market to stay still. Secondly, as those countries are forced to produce to their capacity, it only hastens the day when they too will have declining output. Depletion speeding up
"The phenomenon of multiple counties all declining is a new one for everybody... So, in the longer term, matching demand to the new capacity of producer countries may prove to be a very tough call" Chris Skrebowski, Petroleum Review editor
"What surprised me was the rate of decline among the 18 countries whose production is going down," Petroleum Review editor and oil analyst Chris Skrebowski told Aljazeera."For fourteen out of the eighteen countries the rate of depletion is speeding up. This has confounded a long held view that decline was a slow, gradual process. "The first country to start to decline was the USA. It could be possible that because they have such a high skill base, so many wells and such cheap capital that they were able to slow their rate of depletion. Other countries cannot," he said. Those 18 countries in decline amount to about 25% of the world's producers. They are losing about 1.14 million bpd. This means that the other 75% have to increase output. Not only to add the extra barrels lost by the declining countries, but also to meet leaping global demand, about 2.4 million bpd in 2004. That demand is set to continue its increase, forecast by the International Energy Agency to grow by another 1.8 million bpd in 2005. "It's a crazy see-saw where the fulcrum, the pivot, is constantly moving across. Eventually it is going to get to a point where the see-saw can no longer balance," said Skrebowski. Sudden decline
Another problem analysts are facing is that it appears countries can carry on expanding production until suddenly the decline sets in, never to be reversed.
Depletion could eventually make current high prices seem cheap
"The UK expanded production each year until 1999," Skrebowski continues. "Since then it has gone down every year by 5%, then 6% then 8% and this year, 2004, it looks set to be higher. This is even with the best technologies and techniques available."The country with the biggest rate of decline is Gabon. The impoverished west African state experienced an 18% drop in production year on year. This is on a set of fields who only came on the market in the 1970s, having been developed by the French oil companies. Such a rate of decline could spell disaster for vulnerable African economies. Geo-political factors Of course these are the most obvious examples of depletion. The more intangible effects are geo-political. "Depletion is not very exciting or special if it is just in one country, say the west of country X is going down but the east is going up. No one really cares about that except those directly involved. "If, however, it is going down in 'stable' country X and up in 'unstable' country Y, then you get the geo-political dimension. What happens if declines in safe countries can only be offset by increases from those less secure?" Skrebowski asks. Because that is exactly what may be happening. For example Petrologistics, an oil industry firm which tracks tanker shipments, reported that Saudi Arabian output actually fell by 400,000 bpd last month. No more room
"It's a crazy see-saw where the fulcrum, the pivot, is constantly moving across. Eventually it is going to get to a point where the see-saw can no longer balance" Skrebowski, on demand and supply
"There are serious questions being raised about the ability of Saudi Arabia to expand production. Plus places like Abu Dhabi and Kuwait have little or no room for movement as well. And you don't need very many large producers to peak to make things very difficult for the others," said Skrebowski."As well as the 18 in decline there are many others who have no further room to expand production by any significant amount. Mexico has some problems with expanding any further and they do not appear to have invested in any new exploration whilst China's figures claim they are still just increasing capacity. Yet at the same time even they have admitted their two main fields are in decline." Without gigantic and costly investment, that would itself inflate prices, squeezing more oil out of the ground may prove hard. Petroleum Review's rigorous statistical analysis may just be the prologue to a bigger, more unsettling story. "The phenomenon of multiple counties all declining is a new one for everybody. Up to 1990 only the USA and Romania had started declining. So, in the longer term, matching demand to the new capacity of producer countries may prove to be a very tough call, a very tough call indeed," predicted Skrebowski. And that may prove to be an understatement.
Köszi! Valahogy igy kellene kinézni egy kulturált politikai vitának (ja az egy másik topic). És az is kiderült, hogy honnan vannak a kitünö és naprakész infoid :)) (ahogy elnéztem nagyon pörög ez a yahoo tread).
"Én pont ezt hiányolom pl. itthon is. Ismertek olyan tanulmányokat, terveket, programokat amelyek ebben a témában dolgozzák fel Magyarország lehetöségeit[?]"
azért ne várjunk el túlságosan mélyreható ismereteket az illetékes elvtársaktól.
Ellenben történnek jó dolgok is. Igaz - a világ másik felén - Új Zélandban. Megoldást ott sem találtak, de legalább beszélgettek róla - méghozzá a parlamentben.
A teljesség kedvéért hozzá kell tennünk, hogy a miniszter Úr [Dr MICHAEL CULLEN] nem ismerte a Peak Oil jelentését, de ügyesen válaszolt :))
From: "kiwipriusowner" <doug.clover@p...> Date: Tue Aug 24, 2004 11:01 pm Subject: Peak Oil reaches New Zealand's Parliament
Dear All
I cannot attest to the quality of the debate but Peak Oil has arrived in NZ's political consciousness.
Parliamentary Question Time 24 August 2004 Oil-Prices
2. JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader-Green) to the Minister of Finance: Has Treasury revised its assumption that crude oil prices will ease back to an 'equilibrium' price of US$19 per barrel; if so, what are the Government's current assumptions for oil price trends between now and 2020?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): Treasury is yet to begin its revised forecasting round for the December Economic and Fiscal Update. When that happens it will specifically identify the need to revisit the assumption for oil price trends.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: What planning, if any, is the Government doing to reduce the dependence of the New Zealand economy on oil, in light of the fact that the price of light crude today is nearly US$48 a barrel?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: My colleague the Minister of Energy is working hard on sustainable energy options. It would be helpful if some of those options, such as hydropower and wind power, were more enthusiastically supported by the Green Party.
Rodney Hide: Given the concern over high petrol prices, has the Minister sought the advice and guidance of Mr Jim Anderton, the self-styled 'Minister for Lower Prices'-as he told this House on 30 March, 2000-or is Mr Anderton missing in action on this one, as well?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Mr Anderton has certainly expressed concerns to me about the impacts of rising oil prices. Perhaps we could all hope that the various elements in this House will use their best endeavours to ensure, for example, that the Middle Eastern situation settles down.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: What does the Minister understand by the term 'peak oil', and when does he expect it to occur?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I have to confess that, for once, the member has floored me; I do not understand what is meant by the term 'peak oil'.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: Does the Minister agree, then, that the price of any commodity is likely to rise over time, when demand is increasing exponentially while supplies are being restricted by physical limits; and does he agree that oil is a commodity that has just such characteristics?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: In theoretical terms, yes; in practical terms, no. We have yet to reach the point where it is at all clear that new discoveries in oil-and I now think I understand what the member was getting at before-fall below the level of the projected demand for oil. At the present time, the production of oil is actually outrunning demand, and stockpiling is occurring. Prices are high because of, primarily, the uncertainty in the Middle East, plus the growing demand from China, plus the somewhat confused situation-to put it kindly-surrounding oil and gas companies in Russia.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: Has the Minister been advised that the current oil demand is 81 million barrels a day and the total capacity of the world's oilfields to produce oil is 82.5 million barrels a day; and does he think that that provides sufficient headroom for demand to continue to increase-for example, with China's 40 percent increase in demand in the last year?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Clearly, therefore, the member has confirmed what I have just said: supply is actually exceeding demand at the present time. And, as prices rise, that will encourage both new exploration and also new exploitation of known reserves that were previously uneconomic to exploit-for example, the extremely large Canadian oil shale reserves.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: Has the Minister been advised that for some time now oil discoveries have been running at the rate of one barrel for every four that are burned, and how long does he think that that can continue; further, has he been advised that Canadian shale and tar sands oil will be extremely expensive compared with current supplies, as well as a lot dirtier?
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Certainly on the last point, given the nature of the area there are severe environmental issues, and exploitation would certainly be more expensive. But it does seem to me rather odd that a Green Party member would bemoan a rise in price for a limited product.
"Én sem. Ha ez a modell széles körben elindulna akkor kb. úgy egy fél év múlva jönne pár ember nagy bunkósbottal "
szerintem sem ez a tökéletes megoldás, de ha jobban belegondolsz, akkor a mai gazdasági modell is így működik: azt vallják, hogy ha mindenki a saját boldogulását keresi, akkor az a társadalom egészét is boldogítja - egyedüli különbség, hogy manapság nem bunkósbotokat használnak, hanem a törvény erejével kényszerítenek - és a nagykutyák úgy alakítják ki a törvényeket, hogy az nekik kedvezzen.
figyelmezteti a politikusokat, az olajkorszaknak vége, időben meg kell kezdeni a gazdaság átszervezését
Én pont ezt hiányolom pl. itthon is. Ismertek olyan tanulmányokat, terveket, programokat amelyek ebben a témában dolgozzák fel Magyarország lehetöségeit.
Szívesen segítenék ennek elkészítésében (pl. oldalszámozás, de van egy nyomdász haverom is:))))
Ezzel kéne foglalkozni, nem pedig mindenféle baromsággal.
Soha többé olcsó olaj... Idézi a cikket a www.iwr.de, a megújuló energiák német honlapja.
Bár a hagyományos kitermelés csúcspontját 2015-20 közé teszi, figyelmezteti a politikusokat, az olajkorszaknak vége, időben meg kell kezdeni a gazdaság átszervezését. A felhasználókat sújtó túlzó áremelkedéseket ugyan nem tartja valószínűnek, de nem tartja lehetetlennek a közeljövőben a 80-100$-os olajárat.
Én sem. Ha ez a modell széles körben elindulna akkor kb. úgy egy fél év múlva jönne pár ember nagy bunkósbottal és kitalálná hogy sokkal jobb modell az ha a 12 ember neki dolgozik mint rabszolga. És szépen elõször kialakulna a rabszolgatartó társadalom, majd kis fejlõdés (úgy 500 év) után esetleg a feudalizmus.
új Monbiot cikk a Guardianban: a Növekedés korának vége, eljött az Entrópia kora.
egy kísérlet: 12 ember, 16 hektáron, kis tehenek, egy nagy ló, fatüzelésű kazán. Köldkökzsinórként megtartottak 2 autót, ezen osztoznak mindnyájan. Működik.
egy kis bibi: 1 ember 1,33 hektárt igényel. Ha ezt kivetítjük Magyarországra, akkor a 10 millió embernek 133.000 km2 kellene => sokan vagyunk.
The Age of Entropy is here. We should all now be learning how to live without oil
The only question worth asking is what we intend to do about it. There might be a miracle cure. Photosynthetic energy, supercritical geothermal fluid drilling, cold fusion, hydrocatalytic hydrogen energy and various other hopeful monsters could each provide us with almost unlimited cheap energy.
But we shouldn't count on it. The technical, or even theoretical, barriers might prove insuperable. There are plenty of existing alternatives to oil, but none of them is cheap, and none offers a comparable Eroei.
If it is true that the Age of Growth is over, and the Age of Entropy has begun, and if we are to retain any hope of a reasonable quality of life without destroying other people's, then our infrastructure, our settlements, our industries and our lives require total reconstruction.
Given that our governments balk even at raising fuel taxes, it is rational to seek to pursue our own solutions: to redevelop economic systems which do not depend on fossil fuels.
For several years, I've been involved in one of these. Now that it has passed its 10th birthday, I think it is fair to say that it works.
Tinkers' Bubble is 40 acres of woodland, orchards and pasture in south Somerset. It was bought by a group of environmentalists in 1994, and a dozen people moved in, applied for shares and built themselves temporary houses.
They imposed a strict set of rules on themselves, which included a ban on the use of internal combustion engines on the land. They made a partial exception for transport: the 12 residents share two cars.
Otherwise, the only fossil fuel they consume is the paraffin they put in their lamps. They set up a small windmill and some solar panels, built compost toilets, and bought a wood-powered steam engine for milling timber, some very small cows and a very large horse.
"Továbbra sem értem, hogy egy kőolajfinomító kiesése miért növeli meg a nyersolaj árát."
Addig addig gondolkoztam, hogy kitaláltam egy magyarázatot.
A paraszti logika azt diktálja, hogy ha kiesik egy kőolajfinomító, akkor nincs hol feldolgozni a nyersolajat, miáltal ott vesztegelnek a hajók a kikötőben a nyersolaj-rakományukkal, és olcsón is adják, csak vegye már meg valaki.
csakhogy az olajpiac az furmányosabban (határidősen) működik. Az usák állampolgár beül a Hummerjébe, és tankolni akar. Őt nem érdekli, hogy mikor hol milyen finomító robbant, ő tankolni akar. Tehát benzin vagy gázolaj kell neki. Ha az Usák kőolajfinomítók nem bírják szusszal a fogyasztást, akkor külföldről kell behozni a finomított kőolajszármazékokat. Így hát az eredetileg nyersolaj szállítására tervezett olajtankereket átírányítják benzin és gázolaj szállítására - és a végeredmény: kevesebb nyersolaj a piacon, miáltal felmennek az árak.
"ha megjátszottam volna azt a határidös ügyletet, már most milliárdos lehetnék..:-)"
még semmi sincs veszve. Jómagam a hosszabb határidőkben gondolkoztam ( > 3 év ) abban szinte lehetetlen veszíteni.
Az 1 hónapos határidőknél elég nehéz megjósolni, hogyan alakul a kínálat/kereslet viszony, de a sok éves periódusban szinte lehetetlen, hogy ne legyen egy olyan idő amikor jócskán nyerésre állj. Csak a kiszállás időpontját kell tudni eltalálni :))
Ott az a sok jo metanhidrat az oceanba (2015-re mind az USA mind Japan ipari megoldasokat akar), ott vannak az LNG, CNG tankerek, ott van az atomeromuves hidrogen gyartas. Az elet nem all meg. Az USA meg 10-edannyi olaj fogyasztas mellett is elhetobb hely lesz, mint India vagy Kina Plane elhetobb lesz, mint Mexico, Columbia vagy Jamaica.. Meg meg egy jopar orszag.
direkt metanolos tüzelőanyagcella (DMFC) – A hagyományos, hidrogénnel működő tüzelőanyagcellának több hátránya van. Amennyiben közvetlenül hidrogént használ energiatermelésre, problémát jelent a hidrogén elosztása és tárolása. Más tüzelőanyagok használata esetén pedig szükség van egy átalakítóra, amely ebből hidrogént állít elő. Emellett viszonylag magas, 80 C fok körüli az üzemi hőmérséklete. A direkt metanolos tüzelőanyagcella (Direct Methanol Fuel Cell: DMFA), amelyet Oláh György vezetésével a Dél-Kaliforniai Egyetem Loker Szénhidrogénkutató Intézetében fejlesztettek ki, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory-val közösen, közvetlenül alakítja át a metanolt (vagy más folyékony szerves tüzelőanyagot) elektromos árammá egy polimer elektrolit membrán segítségével. Működése az tüzelőanyag híg vizes oldatának oxigénnel, illetve levegővel történő közvetlen katalitikus oxidációján alapul. A DMFC szobahőmérsékleten is biztonságosan működik, elektromos áramot, szén-dioxidot, vizet és hőt termel. Metanol és levegő betáplálásával folyamatosan üzemeltethető. Működése megfordítható, elektromos áram betáplálásával a DMFC felhasználható szerves tüzelőanyagnak, például metanolnak a szén-dioxid vizes oldatából történő előállítására. Ezért elektromos energia tárolására is alkalmas, hatásfoka jobb az ismert akkumulátorokénál.
